Lucas is waiting for me at the school gate. He’s wearing his leather jacket and a black bandana to keep his hair out of his eyes. His shirt’s hanging below his pullover. He’s so big.
‘So, Chip, how’s it going?’
‘She doesn’t come out of her room much, but I think she’s going to stay.’
‘What about your parents?’
‘They’re cool with it. She’s going to get herself sorted a bit and then she can look for a job when she’s doing better.’
‘They often say that people end up broken, living on the street. After a while they can’t go back to living normally.’
‘I couldn’t care less what people say.’
‘I know, but –’
‘Those “buts” are the real problem. They mean that nothing ever gets done.’
‘You’re little, but you’ve got a big heart, Chip. You’re absolutely right.’
We go into the maths class. The others are looking at us, especially Axelle and Léa. Lucas sits down beside me in the second row.
Since the Christmas holidays he’s given up on the back of the class and sits with me. To begin with, the teachers couldn’t hide their amazement. Lucas came in for all sorts of remarks and warnings. ‘Well, Mr Muller, you’re keeping useful company.’ ‘Miss Bertignac may manage to transmit some of her seriousness to you. Make the most of it and you may get out of a detention.’ ‘Don’t seek inspiration from your neighbour’s work.’ ‘You’ll find that the air is just as agreeable here as at the back of the class.’
All the same, Lucas hasn’t changed his behaviour. He still doesn’t take many notes in class, forgets to turn off his mobile, slumps in his chair, leaves his legs sticking all the way out in the aisle and blows his nose really noisily. But he’s stopped knocking over the tables.
I get a kind of respect from the others now. Even Axelle and Léa say hello and smile at me. I don’t hear the stifled laughter and whispering any more when I answer a question that no one has been able to work out. I no longer catch meaningful glances being exchanged when I finish my test before the others and the teacher collects my paper.
He’s the king, he’s cheeky and a rebel. I’m top of the class, timid and silent. He’s the oldest and I’m the youngest. He’s the biggest and I’m tiny.
In the evening we take the metro or the bus together. He walks me home. I don’t want to hang around because of No. He brings me things for her – comics, bars of chocolate, a few cigarettes in a pack that she smokes at the window. He asks me for news of her, worries about how she’s doing, says we should come over to his place when she’s better.
We have our secret.
.
Chapter 23
In the past few days she’s started coming out of her room and showing an interest in what’s going on in the house. She suggested to my mother that she could do the shopping, take out the bins and help make the meals. She leaves her door open, makes her bed, tidies the kitchen, does the vacuuming and watches the football on TV with us. She goes out a bit during the day but never gets home later than seven o’clock.
When I get back from school she comes to see me and lies on the carpet while I do my homework, flicking through a magazine or a comic book, or else she stays there, her eyes wide open, stretched out below my room’s false ceiling, with its constellation of glow-in-the-dark stars. I watch her chest rise and fall to the rhythm of her breathing. I try to read her thoughts from her face, but nothing’s visible, nothing at all.
At the table she watches how I eat. I can see her making an effort not to make a mistake. She doesn’t put her elbows on the table, she sits up straight and looks at me for approval. I’m sure no one has ever taught her how to hold her knife and fork, that you shouldn’t slurp your soup or mop up your sauce with the bread. Not that I’m such a great model, even though my grandmother’s determined to teach me good manners when I go to stay with her in the holidays. The other day I told No the famous story of what happened last summer at my great-aunt Yvonne’s, who’s my grandmother’s sister and married the son of a real duke. My grandmother took me there for tea. For three days she’d been giving me tons of instructions and had bought me a hideous dress specially. In the car she gave me her final bits of advice and then we drew up in front of their nice house. Yvonne had made some little madeleines and almond biscuits herself. I drank my tea with my little finger in the air. That didn’t seem to please my grandmother that much but I was sitting the way she had shown me, the edge of my bottom on the velvet sofa and my legs close together but not crossed. All the same, it was pretty hard to eat cake with a cup and saucer in your hand and not drop crumbs on the carpet. At one point I wanted to ‘contribute to the conversation’ (as my grandmother says). It wasn’t easy to say something in such a solemn atmosphere, but I jumped in. I wanted to say, ‘Aunt Yvonne, this is delicious.’ I don’t know what happened – a sort of short-circuit in my brain – but I took a deep breath and said calmly and clearly, ‘Aunt Yvonne, this is disgusting.’
No laughed so much when I told her. She wanted to know if I got yelled at. But Aunt Yvonne understood that something had got misconnected or that it was nerves, so she just gave a little laugh, a bit like a cough.
It feels as though No has always been here. Day by day we can see her getting her strength back. We see her face change, and the way she walks. We see her raise her head and hold herself upright, look at things for longer.
We hear her laugh at the television and hum the songs that are on the kitchen radio.
No lives with us. Outside winter has arrived. In the street people are walking more quickly, letting the heavy doors of their apartment blocks swing shut behind them, tapping in their entry codes, pressing intercom buttons and turning their keys in locks.
Outside, men and women are sleeping buried in sleeping bags or under cardboard boxes, on top of metro vents or on the ground. Outside, men and women are sleeping in the recesses of a city they’re excluded from. I know she sometimes thinks about it, but we never talk about it. I surprise her in the evening, her head against the window, looking at the darkness, and I have no idea what’s going through her head. None at all.
.
Chapter 24
Axelle Vernoux’s had her hair cut really short, with a longer, highlighted strand at the front. It’s the attraction of the day. She’s laughing with Léa in the playground. They’re surrounded by boys. The sky’s blue, it’s bitterly cold. It would be simpler if I were like them, if I had tight jeans, lucky charm bracelets, bras and that stuff. Oh well.
The students have come into class without making a noise. Mr Marin calls each name aloud, glances up, then makes a cross. He’s getting to the end: ‘Pedrazas . . . present. Réviller . . . present. Vandenbergue . . . present. Vernoux . . . absent.’
Axelle raises her hand.
‘But I’m here, Mr Marin!’
He looks at her with a vaguely disgusted expression.
‘I don’t know you.’
She hesitates for a second. Her voice trembles. ‘It’s me. Axelle Vernoux.’
‘What happened to you?’
A buzz goes through the class. She’s starting to get teary, she looks down. I hate people to be humiliated like that for no reason. I lean towards Lucas and say ‘That’s really disgusting.’ And this time that’s exactly what I mean.
‘Miss Bertignac, would you like to share your comment with us?’
A tenth of a second’s reflection. No more. A tenth of a second to decide. I don’t have the courage, or the nerve. If I had the ability to rewind time, that would be convenient.
‘I said: that was really disgusting. You don’t have the right to do that.’
‘You can go and be a defender of justice in study hall, Miss Bertignac. Collect your things.’
You mustn’t mess up your exit. It
’s not the time to trip over your feet. I tidy my things and count the steps – twenty-six, twenty-seven to the door. Then I’m out. I can breathe again. I’m a lot bigger than I seem.
After class Axelle grabs my arm and says thanks. It only lasts a second, but it’s enough. It’s all in her eyes.
No’s waiting for me at the school gate. We’re planning to go to Lucas’s. She’s wearing a green pullover my mother lent her. Her hair’s pinned up and her skin’s smooth again. She looks pretty. Lucas comes over and congratulates me on my exit. He kisses No like a friend. That gives my heart a little tweak. The three of us walk off to the metro.
There are pictures everywhere, Persian rugs, old furniture. The living room’s huge. It’s all been carefully planned. Everything is magnificent. But every room feels abandoned, like a cinema set, like it had all been made for make-believe. One evening last year Lucas came home from school and found a letter from his father. His father had been preparing to leave for weeks without saying anything, and then one morning he shut his suitcase and closed the door behind him, leaving his keys inside. His father caught the plane and never came back. In the letter he asked his forgiveness and said that Lucas would understand later. A few months ago Lucas’s mother met another man. Lucas hates him. Apparently he’s the type of man who never apologises on principle, and thinks everyone else is an arsehole. They almost came to blows several times so his mother moved out to stay with him in Neuilly. She phones Lucas and comes back for the weekend from time to time. His father sends money and postcards from Brazil. Lucas gives us the tour. No follows him, asking questions – how does he manage for food, how can he live by himself in such a big apartment, has he never wanted to go to Rio.
Lucas shows us pictures of his father at all ages, a model ship in a bottle they made together when he was little, the Japanese prints he left behind, and his collection of knives. He’s got dozens of them – big, small, medium, penknives, daggers, flick knives, from all over the world. Laguioles, Krisses, Thiers. The handles feel heavy in your hand, the blades fine. No takes them out one by one, makes them dance between her fingers, strokes the wood, ivory, horn and steel. I can tell that Lucas is worried that she’ll hurt herself, but doesn’t dare say anything. He watches her and so do I. She’s good at taking out the blades, folding them back, as if she’s been doing this all her life. In the end Lucas suggests we have tea. No puts the knives back in their boxes. I haven’t touched them.
We’re sitting around the kitchen table. Lucas has got out packets of cakes, chocolate, glasses. I look at No, her wrists, the colour of her eyes, her pale lips, her dark hair. She’s so pretty when she smiles, in spite of the gap left by her missing tooth.
Later we listen to music, slumped on the sofa. Cigarette smoke envelopes us in an opaque cloud. Time stands still. I feel as though the guitars are protecting us, that the world belongs to us.
.
Chapter 25
On my father’s advice, No’s been back to see her social worker. She’s gone though various official processes and visits a day centre twice a week that deals with reintegrating young women who’ve had severe difficulties. There’s a phone and a computer she can use and she can make photocopies. There’s a cafeteria and they give her luncheon vouchers for meals. She’s started looking for work.
My father got some keys cut for her. She comes and goes when she wants, often has her lunch at Burger King because they give change from the vouchers, which means she can buy her own tobacco. She’s replying to job ads and trying for work in shops on spec. She never gets back very late. She’s spending a fair bit of time with my mother. She tells her about her job search and other things too because my mother’s best at getting her to talk. Sometimes when you ask her a question her face will shut down, and she’ll act like she hasn’t heard you. Sometimes she’ll begin to talk when we least expect it – while my mother is preparing the meal, putting away the washing up, or when I’m doing my homework beside her, times when we’re only partly paying attention to her, when she can be heard without being looked at.
This evening my father’s getting back late. The three of us are in the kitchen. My mother’s peeling vegetables (which is an event in itself), I’m flicking through a magazine beside her. My mother’s asking questions, not automatic questions prerecorded on tape, real questions that she seems interested in the answers to. That annoys me a bit. No begins to talk.
Her mother was raped in a barn when she was fifteen. There were four of them. They were coming out of a bar as she was cycling along the road. They made her get into their car. By the time she discovered she was pregnant, it was too late for an abortion. Her parents didn’t have the money to send her to England, where she would still have been within the legal limit. No was born in Normandy. Suzanne left school when her stomach started to get round. She never went back. She didn’t go to the police because the shame would have been even worse. After the birth, she got a job as a cleaner in a local supermarket. She never held No in her arms. She couldn’t bear to touch her. Until the age of seven, No was raised by her grandparents. At the start people pointed and whispered behind their backs and looked away when they went by. The sighing increased, people predicted the worst. It was like a vacuum all around them, that’s what her grandmother told her. She used to take her to the market, to Mass, and came to collect her from the village school. She’d hold her hand to cross the road, with her chin up and her expression proud. And then people forgot. No can’t remember if she always knew who her real mother was, but she never called her Mummy. At the table, by the time No was a little girl, her mother refused to sit beside her. She wouldn’t have her opposite her either. No had to be kept away from her, out of eyeshot. Suzanne never called her by her name, never spoke to her directly, just referred to her as ‘her’, from a distance. In the evening Suzanne went out with the local boys on their motorbikes.
No’s grandparents looked after her like she was their own daughter. They got clothes and toys out of the attic, bought her picture books and educational games. When she talks about them her voice is stronger, there’s a hint of a smile, as if she was listening to a song that brought back lots of memories, a song that would make her emotional. They lived on a farm. Her grandfather worked the land and raised chickens. When Suzanne was eighteen she met a man in a nightclub. He was older than her. His wife had died in a car accident, along with the unborn baby she’d been carrying. He worked for a security company in Choisy-le-Roi. He was making money. Suzanne was pretty. She wore miniskirts and had long dark hair. He wanted to take her to Paris. They left the next summer. No stayed on the farm. Her mother never came back to see her.
When No was still at primary school, her grandmother died. One morning she climbed a ladder to gather apples, but there would be no apple compote that year because she fell on to her back like a big bag of sweets and lay there in her floral blouse. A trickle of blood came out of her mouth. Her eyes were closed. It was hot. No went to tell the neighbour.
Her grandfather couldn’t keep No. He had his chickens and his work in the fields. And a single man with a little girl isn’t right. So No went to Choisy-le-Roi to be with her mother and the man from the security company. She was seven.
Suddenly she stops. Her hands are lying flat on the table. She’s silent. I really want to know what happened next, but you mustn’t rush things. My mother understood that a long time ago, so she doesn’t ask.
In the space of a few weeks, No has found her place among us. She’s got her colour back and probably put on a few kilos. She goes with me all over the place, hangs out the washing, fetches the post, smokes on the balcony, helps choose the DVDs. We’ve almost forgotten the time before, the time without No. We can spend hours side by side without talking. I can tell she’s waiting for me to suggest she comes with me, that she likes it when we get into the lift at the same time, on a mission, when we go shopping together, when we come home as it’s getting d
ark. She keeps the list in her pocket and crosses things off as we go, does a final check to make sure we haven’t forgotten anything before we go to the checkout as if the world depended on it. On the way back she sometimes stops on the pavement and asks me point-blank, ‘We’re together, eh, Lou, aren’t we?’
There’s another question that often comes up, and I answer yes to it too. She wants to know if I trust her, if I have faith in her.
I can’t stop myself thinking of the phrase I read somewhere, I can’t remember where: ‘He who’s always assuring himself of your trust will be the first to betray it’. And I try to chase those words out of my head.
My mother has started flicking through magazines again. She’s borrowed books from the library and been to a couple of exhibitions. She gets dressed, does her hair, puts on make-up, eats with us every evening, asks questions, tells stories about things that happened to her during the day or things she’s seen. She’s regaining the power of speech. She hesitates like a convalescent, loses her thread, picks it up again. She’s called her friends, seen some of her old colleagues and bought new clothes.
In the evening when we’re round the table, I catch my father looking at her with a look that’s tender and incredulous and at the same time full of anxiety as if all of this, which is so mysterious, is just hanging by a thread.
No and Me Page 8
